immediately delete Junk in Mail

Question

Level 1

101 points

immediately delete Junk in Mail

Is there a way to immediately delete emails that end up in my Junk folder?

Currently, in El Capitan Mail (v 9.3), I have only one Gmail account. Because of Gmail's great ability to tag spam, I turn off Mail's "Enable Junk Mail filtering" and just rely on Gmail. All good.

But when I want to empty the Junk folder, I highlight all, hit Delete, and then they go to the Trash folder, where I have to find them again, highlight them, and then delete them a second time.

Is there a method for just deleting these Junk emails just once?

Currently the way, I'm doing it is highlighting all Junk emails, tagging them with a purple flag, deleting them, opening up the Trash folder, sorting by Flag (which places all purple flagged emails together), highlighting the purple flag emails, then hitting delete.

Anyone know an easier way?

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro • MBA 11"

Posted on Apr 29, 2016 12:10 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

207,823 points

Apr 29, 2016 1:38 PM in response to braintoniq

Why not just use this menu option after sending the junk mail to the Trash,

either for all accounts or just your Gmail account. For all accounts you could use the key combination shown.

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Answer 2

braintoniq Author

Level 1

101 points

Apr 29, 2016 5:43 PM in response to Old Toad

Thank you, OT.

I think that option would delete all the emails in my Deleted Folder, which I definitely wouldn't want to do. I do have a Mail Rule that deletes all Deleted Folder emails older than 18 months, so it keeps it slim and tidy. But I do utilize deleted emails often from a few months back, so I wouldn't want to always be deleting everything. I just want to prevent having Spam/Junk emails in that Deleted folder.

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Answer 3

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Apr 29, 2016 6:01 PM in response to braintoniq

I believe that holding down the OPTION key while deleting the message will delete it without moving it to the Trash folder.

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Answer 4

braintoniq Author

Level 1

101 points

Apr 29, 2016 6:54 PM in response to Duane

I'd wondered that, too, Duane. I tried holding down a variety of function keys while hitting the Delete key. So far, they all send the Junk emails to the Trash folder. Also tried the right-click drop-down menu selections, and trying different function keys there. Still no way to immediately delete.

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Answer 5

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Apr 29, 2016 7:06 PM in response to braintoniq

Holding down the OPTION key immediately deletes the messages for me. They do not go into the Trash folder.

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Answer 6

Apr 29, 2016 8:19 PM in response to braintoniq

Actually, right click (control-click) on the Junk mailbox and choose Erase Junk Mail. They will be immediately deleted.

Also in Mail preferences, Accounts, then Mailbox Behavior tab, you can set the Junk mailbox to delete automatically at your preference:

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Answer 7

Sep 3, 2017 7:55 PM in response to braintoniq

Cmd, Opt, Delete will delete Mail message immediately.

The same command will also delete files and folders from Finder, also by passing Trash

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